“The Tell-Tale Heart”: Poe’s Story of the Guilty Conscious

 

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” follows a horrible murder committed by a madman, his justifications of the act, and his subsequent guilt ridden spiral into confession. Throughout the story the narrator tries to convince the audience of his sanity in an attempt to gain their trust and understanding of why he had to kill the old man. In the form of the thunderous beats of the dead man’s heart, the narrator’s guilt consumes him and pressures him to tell the truth–despite his conscious efforts to convince himself and the reader that the man’s ghostly eye simply had to be eliminated. His feelings about his own misconduct prove too much for him, and ultimately force him to confess to his darkest crime; however, his refusal to identify with his guilt is seen through his assignment of the beating heart as the sole motivation of his confession, rather than his acceptance of his sin. The author’s decision to tell the story from the viewpoint of the unreliable murderer gives the audience a look at our own tendencies to disassociate from our actions in terms of guilt, while simultaneously showing us there is a redemptive power in that guilt, should we act upon it.

 

Poe’s use of the unreliable narrator highlights the differing opinions between the implied author’s perspective of guilt, and that of a madman who rather disassociate from it. For the narrator, answering to his guilt meant acknowledging his insanity and lack of morality. He chooses not to do this, and from the start tries to convince the audience not only of his sanity, but of the necessity to commit murder. The narrator says that he “loved the old man” and that it was only very gradually, “by degrees,” that he finally made up his mind to take the life of the filmy blue eye which “caused his blood to run cold.” The narrator is carefully crafting his reasoning behind the murder to gain sympathy and earn validation from the audience; his use of synecdoche functions to pinpoint his aggression solely onto the eye, thus attempting to prove he’s not a hateful killer. In doing so, he actively tries to distinguish himself from other murderers–to humanize himself in a way. He says there was “no passion” in the killing, and he wasn’t after his gold, or even acted out of hatred, since the man had “never given him an insult.” In this way, the narrator is attempting to mute the effects of that guilt; if the audience can agree with him, they can see him as something other than a cold hearted, crazy murderer. Thus, he is attempting to dilute the effects of that guilt, and instead feel vindication for his actions. Poe does this to demonstrate the lengths people can go in their attempts to quell their feelings of guilt.

 

Because the audience is aware of the narrator’s desperation, we are able to see the standpoint of the implied author. We know that because of the way the narrator is written–to appear unreliable and insane–that the implied author doesn’t agree with his methods to ignore guilt and search for justification. Instead, the implied author is acknowledging that often times one tries to convince themselves of their rationale because their guilt realigns their misperceptions about themselves with the reality of their actions. For the implied author, guilt is necessary for us to deal with our moral dilemmas, and to feel the implications of our actions when they are wrong. Poe uses an extreme example­–murder–to show guilt’s redemptive powers. Though he does not want to admit it, guilt had the power to bring the narrator to his knees. That guilt is in the works from the moment he decides to kill the man, as the narrator says, “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.” What is meant to convince the audience that he is a good, stable man, actually provides insight into the pressures of his guilt. Use of the unreliable narrator also gives us something to see ourselves in, as we all tend to be an unreliable or biased narrator every now and then. We tend to try and run away from our guilt, as the narrator does by trying to seek approval from the audience. The implied author intends for us to notice the narrator’s desperate search for justification to illuminate our own desires to escape our guilt and find irrefutable reason for our actions.

 

Poe further develops the themes of guilt and madness–more specifically, our longing to escape it–through his use of motif. The beating of the heart becomes a recurrent symbol that transforms into the narrator’s guilt. Though the narrator doesn’t confess to being pressured by his own conscience and sense of what is right and wrong, he blames the thunderous beating of the heart and his attempts to silence it for making him confess. The heartbeats–his guilt–increases his fury, “as the beating of a drum stimulates a soldier into courage.” Though described in this way, the heartbeats can be looked at as pushing him to act in order to quiet his own apprehensions and nervousness, rather than providing him with “courage,” as he later says, “amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror.” The heartbeat’s frequency–as a representation of guilt–increases his anxiety, and as the volume gets louder, he is pressured to act in order to silence it. The same climactic buildup is used again when the police arrive, as the beating becomes deafening, causing the resultant paranoia of the narrator to peak and forcing his confession. The heartbeats are described to be painful, as the narrator exclaims: “Oh God! What could I do? I foamed–I raved–I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose overall and continued to increase.” Showing the guilt in this way is particularly effective because it shows a displacement between the narrator–who swears he is reliable–and his ability to identify his actions as being immoral. He doesn’t acknowledge feelings of guilt or remorse, but instead shows the pressures of the heartbeats and their ability to steer his confession. This further develops the ideas that we tend to avoid facing our guilt. The implied author crafts the guilt to manifest itself as the heartbeats to show its power as well as act as a scapegoat, illustrating our reluctance to identify with our guilt and our actions.

 

The short story ends with a confession to solidify the implied author’s message: guilt has the redemptive power to show us the reality of our actions and thus pressure us to act on them. Guilt is what balances morality and immorality, and it is necessary for us to feel remorse and push us to make decisions that don’t violate out ethics. Without the presence of guilt, horrible actions like murder, violence, and hatred would rule our actions. Poe demonstrates the overwhelming effect of guilt through the mind of a madman to show us our inner desire to combat guilt, and our reluctance to identify with the morality of our actions, but also to show the necessity of guilt for us to maintain moral balance.